By Chilltown Blues

Last year, we reviewed the “Slavery is Crime” EP from Vumbi Dekula and the Dekula Band and featured a couple of song translations from Dekula and bandmember Gaby Kababa Nkomba.

This year, record label Sing and Song Fighter has collected and supplanted that release with a vinyl and digital release on June 5 combining “Slavery is Crime” and two-track single “Coltan Sounds.”

As was the case with “Slavery is Crime,” this new longer EP features Congolese rumba that evokes summer vibes — a perfect accompaniment for being near the water somewhere, uplifted, in part, by harmonies that build on Dekula’s deft guitar playing. In the aforementioned piece, we wrote “‘Slavery is Crime’ uses its melodic qualities to speak to horrific status quos that — familiarly — continue to be un- or under-sung, and it evokes a sense of being more free than the world may allow depending, in part, on the womb lottery.1”

Of the pointed “Coltan Sounds,” Sing A Song fighter’s notes Dekula explaining: “Coltan is minerals, like gold. In Congo they use it to produce mobile phones. There is UN military there to keep the peace and avoid conflicts about this, but … we don’t want anymore genocides under your watch. Your mission was to keep peace unfortunately it’s turning to robbery.”

Though groups tasked with helping people in dire straights having individuals exploiting those situations for their benefit is almost certain, unfortunately (everywhere), we also reached out via email to an expert on Congo in the hopes of elaboration but received no reply.

(The Associated Press released a report, “UN experts report widespread peace deal violations in eastern Congo,” today, July 2.)

The Dekula band plays on.

Drawing on Scars

On the heels of their excellent second album “Green House” — of which we wrote “anything that sounds the least bit ‘usual’ here quickly veers off into fresher territory, with lyrics that are well-wrought and uniquely expressive as the guitar soars” — Drawing on Scars duo Jodie Reid and Will Thacker released “Expectations” on June 18. This four-track EP follows suit with two heavier tracks that fit perfectly as a mix of alternative rock, metal and power pop. The two latter tracks, “Wave of Time” and “In the Dark,” are slowed and pared down but practically orchestral, building on emotion-tinged singing to big crescendos. Lovely stuff.

The Static Sea

JC-based the Static Sea released five track, “In Lieu of Nothing,” on June 19 and it’s polished dreamy folktronica the whole way through. From the music we’re familiar with, their sound evokes Father John Misty - if Misty were always operating at his most melodic. Songs can be part-straightforward lyricism and part-cryptic nooks and crannies, but they’re always sung and accompanied in a way that gives them an immediate emotional language. The last track, “Where It Ends,” is a great encapsulation of this project of this music navigating bittersweet with melodies much more sweet than bitter.

Chilltown Blues

No musical release from any of us, as of yet, but the following is from an interesting write-up on a photo of ours at https://www.fuse-pop.com/artsky-chilltownblues-pigeon.

“The post comes from the visual and written practice that defines the Chilltown Blues project: finding the texture of ordinary urban life and holding it up to the light long enough for something to become visible. A pigeon sculpture in the snow is not, on its face, a remarkable subject. That is precisely the point. The work of this kind of feature writing — and this kind of photography — is to demonstrate that remarkable is not a prerequisite for attention.”

We’d prefer if that last remarkable were in quotes — “remarkable” — but we appreciate this piece.

And you can help this work by becoming a free or paid subscriber, particularly the latter if you have the means; visiting our support page, or, if you like, buying a shirt or something else we’ve designed at chilltown-blues-shop.fourthwall.com. This post is provided without a paywall for a limited time thanks to our paid subscribers.

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Previously:

This humble post and comic, sans paywall, is made possible by our paid subscribers. Thank you. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, if you have the means; visit our support page, or, if you like, buy a shirt or something else we’ve designed at chilltown-blues-shop.fourthwall.com.

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By D Menzies

Chilltown rapper Constant Flow (CF) dropped his latest album, “Pizza Warz,” June 8, and it’s another well-crafted work that taps into a disappearing landscape as part of its foundation. This time, however, there’s a little more frustration for what helped make way for much of that landscape to be usurped.

“This album is a love letter to Monmouth Street in Downtown Jersey City and my old Italian neighborhood,” CF told Chilltown Blues earlier this week.

That street was the locale for the feud/price war between longtime city pizzeria Three Brothers from Italy, founded by Patsy, and Frank and his self-named spot that opened next door to Three Brother’s in the early ’90s.

As the album’s title track, “Pizza Warz” paints a portrait of this feud as struggle for some notion of the American dream.

“‘Pizza Warz’ is two homeys fighting over a block they don’t own,” CF said. “They were fighting among themselves not knowing someone would come along and buy the whole block and put everything but pizzerias there.”

The idea of the American dream as notion is something CF explores throughout the album.

It’s interwoven on the lyrical gymnastics of “Metal Flex feat Dontique Mangual,” which deftly shows Mangual and CF’s cadence and rhyme scheme skills in a pinball high-score fashion. The track is an obvious highlight.

“More of That,” track three, is like “Billy Joel ‘I want that old rock ‘n’ roll s—t,” CF said. “‘More of that’ is a saying that people used to say back in the day. When you’re doing the opposite (of what they want), it’s like ‘less of that.’”

Through a lens asking what people want more of from him as a rapper — ’90s Nel, as an example, who’s more along the lines of what have been the more extreme and commercial trappings of the genre — CF moves on to explore change in the city as a whole as anchored in his old neighborhood.

On “Icy’s,” CF raps: “Navigating this pool, I see the shark fins. Those who graduated from school now sleep on a park bench. So called affordable housing. S--t faker than folklore, we just orbit around it.”.

Ultimately the song is about the one person who makes the narrator feel like they’re not an alien. “Change is the only constant, right?” CF said. “But this person never changes; whether for good or bad, that person is always there. At the song’s end, (the narrator) keeps her around because he sees a reflection of the twin towers in her eyes (visible, during its day, from Chilltown’s waterfront). ‘We witnessed these events together, and we’re always going to come back because we experienced these things together.’”

Another highlight, “Icy’s” disparately covers a lot of territory — it sits among a string of songs that find the narrator reconciling, or trying to reconcile, with the way he used to see the world.

“Think of U,” another highlight, had CF reminiscing about the last time he saw a friend.

“Me and my friend would walk pass Lambiase Memorial plaza, we would separate because he would talk down Newark Avenue and I lived on Second Street,” he said. “We were split up, and we never saw each other again. You never know the last time you see your homey.”

While the world was better with that friend in it, “back then (per-gentrification) it was not all good,” CF mused. “Even now I’m telling people where (McNair Academic, the city’s most glorified school) is now located used to be part of the school to prison pipeline,” CF said. “The former P.S. # 32 there (also known as “Tre Deuce”) was notorious …” as the school where students who got expelled from their district school essentially got one last chance.

“Not everything that glitters was good just because we made a s—t nugget,” CF said. “It wasn’t as good as I thought it was. The lead paint chips. The toxic waste before they built on all the Superfund sites.”

From “Photosynthesis” through “Revenant” and “Coronation,” there’s a theme of being squeezed almost to the point of return … in “Photosynthesis” it’s trying to find sunlight through the crack of a cell the narrator is thrown into because he wouldn’t kill women and children. In “Revenant,” CF likens the bear attack in the 2015 movie “The Revenant” as Chilltown mauling the track’s narrator, but there’s a rebound, in part, it would seem, to acknowledge local giants who’ve passed away.

Produced by Soulful Soze and mixed by SpeedyBabyy, “Pizza Warz” ends fittingly with an ode to the loss of another such figure.

Final track “Term Illness” includes a message in which the late rapper Brav Divi (Marcus Waters) leaves CF a voice message expressing excitement on collaborating together on an album.

“The track he sent was a tough act to follow, can’t rush that,” CF raps, on a track where he yearns for more time and, intrinsically, a foothold in a city less heavy on things to struggle against, to have helped that happen.

Find CF on social media @cf201 and check out “Pizza Wars” here: https://cf201.bandcamp.com/album/pizza-warz.

This story is made possible sans paywall for a limited time by our paid subscribers. Thank you. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, if you have the means; visit our support page, or, if you like, buy a shirt or something else we’ve designed at chilltown-blues-shop.fourthwall.com.

By Chilltown Blues

Milena Mass has seen all that goes into a theatrical production from start to finish — oftentimes with no ode, so to speak, to show for it when all is said and done, so the JC resident decided to make a platform for that herself.

“The Off-Off-Broadway scene is one I know and love,” Mass told Chilltown Blues. “I’m a founding member (now managing director) of Bluebird Theatre Company, a nonprofit established in 2019. I’ve spent years seeing how much work goes into small and independent productions, and then how quickly the record of that work can disappear once the run is over and the scramble begins all over again for every grant application, show pitch, and next production.

“Unless there was formal press coverage, there often isn’t much left that reflects how the work actually reached people,” Mass said. “And formal critics and reviewers naturally don’t have the bandwidth to get to every show they’re sent a comp ticket for in a small black box, without A-list actors or large institutional backing.”

All this, Mass pointed out, in the age of logging and stats.

“We have Goodreads, Letterboxd, rings and wearables to track every movement, and so many other tools that let us keep a record of anything we read, watch, do, and experience,” Mass said. “Combining those two points, creating ode became a way to give theatre audiences a place to keep their own record of what they’ve seen, while also giving theatre-makers a free resource to hold onto that response and use it for good.”

On ode — available via iOS on the App Store directly or via https://joinode.art as of December — audiences can log the shows they’ve attended, rate them and write “odes,” make lists, and find new shows through searching and social activity.

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By D Menzies

In 2018, Mary Chauvin created and directed “The Rose: Pleasure Lagoon” at ColdTowne Theater in Austin, Texas. The improv parody of dating reality shows debuted to sold-out crowds, and director and improv teacher Amy Knop would produce the next year’s spin-off, “The Rose: Trouble in Paradise,” and has been a fixture of the troupe’s seasons ever since — including The Rose performing in Upright Citizens Brigade’s Del Close Marathon’s in NYC, (UCB Theatre, 242 E 14th Street) on Sunday, June 14th at 11:30 a.m on the main stage.

“What I love about The Rose is it brings together a diverse set of performers from across Austin’s vibrant improv comedy scene to make an incisive parody of reality TV franchises like ‘The Bachelor,’” Knop said.

One guidepost of The Rose is to do what not many reality dating shows have, and that’s explore relationships beyond heteronormativity.

“Co-director Tiana Stuart and I look for players who can bring big characters to the stage but also fearlessly support, share focus with, and listen to their scene partners,” Knop said. “I’m always astounded each season at how quickly our cast comes together to make magical chemistry on stage happen; it could have been scripted but it wasn’t.”

Knop has also been intrigued by exploring the nature of reality TV — “something that purports to be ‘real’ but is actively edited and produced toward a certain narrative,” Knop said. “So we also explore that with behind-the-scenes moments in testimonial booths where performers can really let their interior motivation shine. Everyone is so funny and talented -- and most importantly a supportive scene partner!”

One of those scene partners is Natalia Rubio, who earlier this year shepherded her first short film, “Notarized,” with some of the skills she had honed as actor and performer shining through.

“I initially started taking improv classes because I wanted to start acting,” Rubio said. “When I had first moved to Austin, I looked up affordable acting classes and the first thing that came up was the Diversity Scholarship at the Hideout Theater. I applied that night and I’ve been performing ever since. Improv appealed to me mostly because it’s a fun and collaborative art form. I get to be part of a team that makes each other —and hopefully the audience — laugh. I particularly enjoyed learning at the Hideout because of their emphasis on narrative improv. They specialize in improvised plays and narrative storytelling, which is right up my alley.”

A few months before Rubio joined the cast of The Rose, she became a founding member of the troupe Misterios (having their season finale performance in Austin on June 12th, FYI).

“I auditioned for and joined the cast of The Rose a few months after (that). This was in the fall of 2024,” Rubio said. “I was interested in The Rose due to its narrative nature. It’s essentially an improvised parody of The Bachelor and other dating style reality shows. I get to create a character and develop them throughout the show. It’s fast-paced yet deeply relational and I have a great experience every time I get to be in it. The cast is also incredibly talented and some of the funniest people I know. Most of the fun for me is honestly just getting to watch my castmates perform.”

This dynamic underlies what Rubio believes is the main principal for improv — one that may not be so obvious as to why it works so well when it does, to someone outside of it and on some level used to seeing “me, me, me!” cultural norms.

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By D Menzies

When a new videogame console is released, one of the concerns has been, for all the new graphical capabilities a new system has, how loud would the fan /cooling system be that has been necessary to a piece of hardware essentially not burning out?

People also don’t seem to like the sound of a fan whirring over the sound of the game itself.

And with something like a data center, a comparatively massive conglomeration of computational infrastructure needed to support AI models, the concern is considerably scaled up; the “game” is life. With push back from residents local to the areas where they are built, as there has been in Union County, New Jersey in the past month, data center companies that have addressed this issue have generally said one of two things: they are, or will be, in compliance with the local noise regulations, or they have or continuing to look for ways to mitigate the noise further than is necessary.

That noise, even if complying with those regulations, generally runs 24/7, with peaks and valleys.

How loud can a data center’s cousin of sorts, a bitcoin mining center — with its model wherein more computers have to be added to a mining operation, as the more users there are the need for more power to process “discovery” of bitcoin in its more limited pool — or just a regular ol’ data center be?

According to an article from TechTarget (TT), “Understanding the impact of data center noise pollution,” back-up generators utilized by data centers run from 85dBA on the smaller end to 100 dBA on the larger end, with multiple generators generally being used at once. HVAC systems range from 55 to 85 dBA.

And that’s ancillary equipment.

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By the Chilltown Blues

In order of most newly released, let’s look at four musical projects.

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From the Chilltown Blues

This horoscope, purely for entertainment purposes (wink wink), is applicable for anywhere from a week to several years.

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This humble post and comic, sans paywall, is made possible by our paid subscribers. Thank you. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, if you have the means; visit our support page, or, if you like, buy a shirt or something else we’ve designed at chilltown-blues-shop.fourthwall.com.

By Chilltown Blues

A month ago, Beard Snax released their latest album on Bandcamp. “semolina luv u” is the duo’s eleventh release in just under a decade, and its mix that tangibly weaves folk and punk is catchy, witty, occasionally crass, and generally grounded with heart. The songs also emote a relatable sense of the world as experienced from the duo’s hometown, Stoke-on-Trent in England, where the personal mazes are, as they tend to be, informed in part by societal ills.

Beard Snax are friends Cai Brown, on mandolin, backing vocals, kazoo, and most of the chords and lyrics on “semolina luv u”; and Kez Kesic on guitar, lead vocals, and chords and lyrics for 3a and 10.

They shared their thoughts with Chilltown Blues on the new album, their music, Stoke-on-Trent, and more.

Countercultural?

In an album full of interesting, well-crafted shorter songs, “Cancelled — gateway 2 glinner” and “vasectomy pls” feel elevated, in part, because Beard Snax is good at narratives and these are two of the longer songs. Both have elements that maybe feel a little more countercultural than they should, even given what “countercultural” as a term conjures presently.

“Cancelled — gateway 2 glinner references “Father Ted” co-creator Graham Linehan. Linehan was “permanently banned” from Twitter in 2020 “after repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation,” a then-Twitter spokesperson told CNN. According to a 2020 report from the Guardian, Linehan had recently replied to a post from the Women’s Institute wishing all the group’s transmembers a Happy Pride with “men aren’t women tho.”

Linehan got his account back in 2022 when Twitter was acquired by Elon Musk. Linehan was cleared Nov. 25 last year of harassing a trans activist on social media (but not criminal damage of their phone in an encounter), with the Associated Press reporting that the U.K. district judge saying although Linehan’s social media posts were “deeply unpleasant, insulting and even unnecessary” they did not constitute harassment.

“We usually write songs separately and demo them to one another,” Cai said. “As it happened we both wrote songs involving Graham Linehan on the same day, so we stuck them together!”

For Kez, “‘Cancelled’ (the song) was the result of scrolling too much Facebook, and “watching people I grew up with turn from school bullies to essentially adult bullies,” he said.

“Adult bullies are smarter though, and they know how to hide behind irony and Netflix comedy specials,” Kez added. “And Glinner (the person) was a perfect encapsulation of that, being one of the idols of such ‘cancelled’ comedians, so it just made sense to join the songs together. A man once a lauded creator of British comedy who spends his days (on social media) fighting an imaginary battle against trans people. Can’t imagine a funnier fate.”

“‘Father Ted’ really was a big part of my life growing up,” Cai said. “I watched the boxset of DVDs on repeat religiously as a teenager. I wanted to be a comedy writer and remember writing about Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews in an essay about inspirational people for school. So it’s tragic to me that Linehan, the genuinely hilarious and insightful writer, has metamorphosed into Glinner, a monomaniacal rage-fuelled Twitter troll. I like plenty of work by people who I disagree with politically — ‘Ren and Stimpy’ springs to mind — but Glinner is so utterly absorbed by one monolithic worldview that it’s seeped into everything he does, turning his current comedy into humorless political rants ... It’s sad. Be angry when you need to be angry, but ranting 24/7 is no way to live your life. And that’s not a partisan issue, by the way. Obviously, our political rants are different, because we think they’re very funny.” (Visualize Cai winking here, he said.)

In that vein, “‘vasectomy pls’ isn’t really an argument against the status quo, it’s an argument against status quos in toto,” Cai said. “I have nothing against the bands Status Quo or Toto, incidentally.

“I often write from someone else’s perspective, and this one was based on a conversation with a friend who was trying, and failing, to get cleared for a vasectomy. I’ve never asked for one, so if you have strong opinions about vasectomies then please don’t come for me — assuming you still can. I’m more of a descriptive writer than a prescriptive one.”

The idea that people should have some choice over whether they have children may be a revolutionary concept in some circles, Cai said, but that’s what he thinks should be the case.

“As to whether you should personally have kids, that’s a difficult decision, and the song is ambivalent on it,” Cai said. “The song quotes ‘Where’s Your Head At?’ by Basement Jaxx, which itself samples ‘M. E.’ by Gary Numan, which we also sing a line of at the end of our song. I guess this represents the fact that you can’t really control what your offspring do or what they’ll eventually become. But Numan’s original ‘M. E.’ is also about being the last thing alive, slowly dying a lonely death. ‘We were so sure. We were so wrong.’ So it’s quite pretentious for a song about semen redirection, really.”

“the joy of fish” and k f c

“the joy of fish” sounds like XTC meets Pixies, with Kez’s vocals being a highlight for the ending refrains “Jag with her bags getting off at the station” and “prisons for everyone.”

The song “is a bit of a chimera, really,” Cai said. “The title is from my favorite story in the Zhuangzi — https://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/LaoJuang/JoyOfFish.html — and the first section is an adaptation of a journal article by Fife-Cook and Franks called “Koi Seek Out Tactile Interaction with Humans: General Patterns and Individual Differences,” investigating individual personality in fish. Unfortunately, I wrote it from memory and so misrepresented Gingko as quite a sociable carp, but he was apparently rather reclusive. Sorry, Gingko! Then that little break waltz-time is a brief pastiche of ‘Point Me At The Sky’ by Pink Floyd, for some reason.”

So where does the “Jag” reference come from?

Cai used to live in Withington, Manchester, he said; “and (that) final section is about a local legend, Jagkanchana ‘Jag’ Singh … You can read a bit more about her, and hear a drum and bass tribute to her, at (this link) https://www.manchestersfinest.com/articles/guide-manchesters-greatest-characters,’ Cai explained. “Jag basically used to ride the 143 Bus all day, every day, with bags full of leaflets she’d written about (what she described as a) conspiracy involving the university sector either kidnapping or indoctrinating her son into some kind of cult. She was — and hopefully still is — also a very likeable and talkative character who is ironically well-loved by Oxford Roads’ student community. She is entirely different from ‘the Jags’ mentioned elsewhere on the album in ‘The Shape of Bigfoot,’ who are of course Partick Thistle F.C., Glasgow’s — and therefore the world’s — finest ‘soccer’ team. Oh yeah, and the ‘prisons for everyone’ bit is an apparently reassuring quote from the incumbent UK government, because God forbid we run out of cells to stuff petty criminals into.”

When it comes to “K F C,” the song that precedes “fish” and maybe evokes “snax” the most on this album, it paints a portrait of a “sacred” gathering at a perhaps not so sacred place. It’s inspired by Kez’s millennial-era attempt to fit in as a teen spending an afternoon loitering with a bunch of goth kids.

“Needless to say, I didn’t end up joining the goth subculture,” Kez said.

For his part in “K F C,” Cai said he just named a load of goth bands he likes and ripped the chords off of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”

“I’m vegan so I had to look up what the menu items are actually called at K F C,” Cai said. “I guess food is just funny, I mean look at all those Weird Al songs: ‘Eat It,’ ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch,’ etc. Our band is named after my tendency to eat crumbs out of my beard, so clearly it’s something that we find amusing. You could take the bit about ‘Konformist Fascist Corporations, Killing F---ing Chickens’ at face value and I’d very much agree with the sentiment, but I really was just trying to come up with something ridiculous that an edgy teenage goth would say. Perhaps we should all be more in touch with the edgy teenage goth inside of us.”

Songwriting, folk-punk and underground hip-hop

With Cai’s and Kez’ friendship at the heart of Beard Snax, their songwriting begins with the duo separately trying to make each other laugh and making a demo of the results for each other, Cai said.

“Most of my songs just sort of appear fully formed based on random phrases I’ve picked up,” Cai said. “‘semolina luv u’ (the new album’s title track) is literally just a chant I heard some undergrads shouting at a picnic table. Then other times they start off as style-parodies. Believe it or not, ‘Class of 2026’ started life as a Devo parody and the original demo had me doing a bad Gerry Casale impression and everything. But Kez is a far more authentic person than I am and sings it in his own voice, transforming it into something a bit more original!”

This is “because when I sing badly in punk music, it’s a genre trope rather than just annoying,” Kez said. “Well, it is still annoying, but yeah.”

Although their Bandcamp bio refers to their music as folk-punk, Cai doesn’t see that label encompassing Beard Snax’s music in an exact way.

“The only ‘folk punk’ I listen to in the generic sense is AJJ, and they’ve not really been ‘folk punk’ since their album, ‘Knife Man,’” Cai said. “But I love bands that incorporate folk and punk elements in less taggable ways, like Pixies, Guided By Voices, early Hawkwind and Syd Barrett’s solo stuff. Rough, idiosyncratic music with strong acoustic elements, I guess. I listen to and make, under the name Tomistoma, a lot of prog rock and I bought my first mandolin as a teenager because I’d heard Steve Howe of Yes playing one. Unfortunately, I am not Steve Howe, so the music that came out sounded a lot less polished and more ‘punk.’ But yeah, I don’t really consider us to be ‘folk punk’, but I know that Kez does, so make up your own mind on that one! And hey, I’m sure that tagging it as ‘folk-punk’ helped you to come across our music, right?”

(It did.)

"AJJ specifically actually is what got us reconnected and over time we became this band,” Kez said. “Each of us simultaneously has similar and yet very different tastes, so I think that’s why we sound the way we do. I certainly fell hard into folk-punk, Pat the Bunny is the reason I learned guitar; but long before that, I grew up on underground hip hop and it took quite some time for me to actually broaden my tastes. I like all the classic folk-punk staples, but a special mention must go to HappyHappy (https://happyhappy.bandcamp.com) who just put a new album out — she knows how to really nail feelings in a way I wish I could.”

Reflecting on the reactions Beard Snax gets from most places they have played — varying “from bemusement to outright hostility” — Kez supposed they are countercultural to an extent.

“I feel like we balance each other out and that results in the sound we have,” Kez said. “I know I certainly have a tendency to tread the same ground in my writing at times if left to my own devices, so having that extra insight and fresh ideas that I could never in a million years come up with really helps to deepen our material in my opinion. Ultimately, we are friends before we are a band, and so I think that helps the music to feel and sound organic. Primarily, we don’t make and play music for any reason other than we enjoy it and think it’s fun. Though being paid is nice too of course!”

Stoke-on-Trent, aka “The Potteries”

Going through Beard Snax’s discography will make it immediately clear they’ve thought about the world as they navigate it — through lenses that include what one might call class-issues.

“Understanding class and its effect is important, but I think we need to be careful not to identify too strongly with it either,” Cai said. “It’s a pretty poor label, because at least in the UK it’s based as much on how you act and your interests as it is your income. I simultaneously got s--t at school for being on free school meals and for sounding too posh, so I’ve never really felt much connection to any class in particular. It becomes this performative thing which I have zero interest in. There are bands I won’t name that make their entire thing about being working-class, and it comes off as a caricature. I find basing your entire personality on how much money you have, or grew up with, a bit tedious, to be honest. Having said all of this, Kez probably sees this all very differently, and I think his ‘Under the Sea’ song (track 10 on ‘semolina luv u’) is a great example of his outlook.”

“Stoke is an interesting place,” Kez said. “A city that splits itself into ‘six towns’ that have varying levels of poverty sounds almost like something you would read in a dystopian science fiction book, yet that is the reality here. Think like the Midgar plate from Final Fantasy VII but with more cigarettes and drugs. There is a huge homelessness and drug problem in Stoke, though as someone who drinks far too much I am not one to judge.

“People are looked down on with great disgust as the lesser-thans, but with the way the UK has been for the past decade or so, I don’t believe that to be exclusive to Stoke,” Kez continued. “I think there’s certainly a level of resentment and bitterness in my writing that Stoke played a part in, I still have perpetual imposter syndrome despite objective successes, because Stoke is a place that likes to stagnate and put asterisks on your accomplishments. At the same time, I have little to compare it to, as I have rarely lived elsewhere for long. But any announcement of attempting to bring something new to the city or to fix something results in very little but derision, while people would rather romanticize things from two or three decades ago that are, in reality, never coming back.”

Kez said he’s prone to distrusting those who prioritize wealth and status, having “grown weary of the national gaslighting of our generation that we haven’t earned what those before us did, when those before us objectively benefited from things we never will.

“Nothing you do is ever enough to earn the right to live even semi-comfortably in the eyes of some, and I think that’s just really f----g sad. I am perhaps too emotional at times when it comes to things like that, as I know things are not that simple, but I confess that it’s a trap I fall into quite easily. I don’t care how much somebody personally earns, I care whether they think someone is beneath them because of it, I suppose. Not if you’re a CEO though.”

Cai wrote a song about Stoke-on-Trent on the duo’s first album — https://beard-snax.bandcamp.com/track/s-o-t — and in the near-decade since very little has changed, he said.

What Cai further explained is also evocative of what Chilltown would be more like if it wasn’t so increasingly tied to the values of the major economic power (NYC) it’s close to. Though not an immediately well-known “rust-belt” U.S. city, Chilltown’s loss of factory jobs that coincided with white flight and two sociological catastrophes formed a wound. In between the new glossiness, worlds measured by rust-belt molded median incomes remain.

“The (Stoke-on-Trent) area is still known as ‘The Potteries,’ but the pottery industry here died out before we were born,” Cai said. “Globalization and automation made it cheaper to do elsewhere and nothing ever really took its place. There’s a statue opposite the university that says ‘A Man Can’t Fly’: I think that sums up the mentality here pretty well. There’s a lot of old disused industrial buildings around Stoke that are slowly being reclaimed by nature, with plants and flowers slowly crumbling away the brickwork. I’d like to think that we’re a bit like those weeds.”

Find Beard Snax on Instagram @beardsnax and their whole discography on Bandcamp here.

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By Chilltown Blues

When Bayonne, NJ resident Alpana Mittal, aka Tejaswini, was awarded with “The Universal Genius: Tribute to Leonardo da Vinci” award by Effetto Arte Fondazione, an art foundation in Italy, she was unable to attend the ceremony in Milan, in which the recipients gathered at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci (Italy’s National Museum of Science and Technology).

But Mittal was able to attend the 2026 NYC Art Expo this past weekend, April 10-12, where her work was on display at Effetto Arte’s booth.

“I’m truly honored and deeply grateful to receive this prestigious international award from the Fondazione Effetto Arte in Italy,” Mittal said. “It still feels a bit surreal, and I’ve needed time to fully take it in ... This recognition means so much to me and inspires me to continue growing, creating, and sharing my artistic journey. Thank you, (Effetto Arte Foundation), for this incredible honor.”

Mittal didn’t apply for this award. Effetto Arte’s team searches for artists and found Mittal’s profile on the Pro Arts (artists membership community) website and looked for more on her work online, she told Chilltown Blues.

Learning more about the award was fascinating, Mittal said. “It was a tribute to famous artist Leonardo da Vinci.”

da Vinci is a central figure in Italy’s “High Renaissance,” and as much for the visual/metaphorical aesthetics of his work, which has been characterized as having a humanism distinct in all people portrayed despite being produced in a time/place where most artists worked for “pious” wealth, da Vinci’s broad intellectual curiosity seems to embody Effetto’s hopes to “counteract the intellectual flattening of our time.

“Especially in this historical moment, art needs spaces of maximum participation so that even the general public can take part in it,” they write on the English version of their website, www.effettoarte.net/?lang=en.

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(To avoid spoilers, check out “Notarized,” just over four minutes, before reading.)

By D Menzies

It’s spring and the annual Easterseals Disability Film Challenge is back, with this year’s theme being “dramedy.”

The film challenge invites participants who have a disability to be either on screen or behind the camera and to, over the course of about a week, produce an original short film with a few specific guidelines.

Then it’s the awareness campaign stage, which lasts until Sunday, April 12, this year, in which all of the films are available to be screened on the Easterseals YouTube page and shared meanwhile.

In “Notarized,” Emilia Gonzalez (Rubio) is applying for a placard so that she can have more accessible parking accommodations. But Nelva the Notary, played by Kristen Drenning, feels she has to do her utmost diligence in getting medical documentation beyond Emilia, there, in person, making her limb difference clear as possible.

The dramatic comedy may seem inherent, but Rubio, Drenning and company add a lot of nuances that make it sparkle.

“Notarized” speaks to the unique challenges of having a limb difference but, as all of the disability film challenge’s films do, if one is open to it, there’s a universal theme of navigating the world from a vantage point in which someone can be more vulnerable than whatever is supposed to be typical.

“This is my first time participating in the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge and it’s actually my first time ever making a film,” Rubio says. “I follow several disabled artists on Instagram and had seen them post about the challenge last year. I really loved the concept of the challenge for multiple reasons. The main reason being that it supports people with disabilities through its mission and by connecting and showcasing disabled artists. I had always wanted to make my own films, but I never knew where to start.”

The challenge’s guidelines and time-frame restriction really helped her lock in, Rubio said.

“The day before the challenge submissions closed I thought ‘Let’s do it!’ And I reached out to my friend Nathaniel Archer, who produced, among many other things, the film. Once he was on board, I knew we could figure everything else together. He helped me from start to finish and I could not have asked for a better partner for this. This experience taught me so much about what it takes to plan and create a film.”

In “Notarized,” Rubio plays Emilia dealing with her plight in a way that feels straight even during the bigger comedic moments, but there’s also subtleties that are honed, in part, by experience.

“I love comedy,” Rubio said. “I started my acting journey by learning improv at the Hideout Theatre in Austin, TX. I immediately fell in love with the art form and it plays a huge role in my life. My favorite thing in the world is to get to be silly with my friends.”

Rubio was excited by the film challenge’s genre being dramedy this year; it allowed her to play with that dynamic she loves in addition to the more serious elements, she said.

“I’ve always believed comedy is best when based in truth,” Rubio said. “I wanted my character to be grounded in reality to showcase the true feelings of having to go through this process. Sometimes it’s hard not to laugh when life keeps throwing obstacles at you, though. In real life, when I called my doctor about writing a note for me and they told me he had left the clinic — he just transferred, don’t worry (see film) — I cried in my car and then immediately started laughing.”

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By the Chilltown Blues

“The Twilight Zone” (1959-1964) came to exist in part because creator Rod Serling had a hard time writing commercially about things he thought were important. He grew up on radio and the best of that medium helped inspire his own storytelling, along with hopes that TV would not become, like radio had, Serling thought, a medium for communicating meaningful ideas reduced to glorified advertising.

As a TV writer, Serling was fortunate enough to have a script produced as part of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (a 1958-1960 variety show from the production company co-created by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz). The episode was in what would become the fantastical “Twilight Zone”-style and was a success, opening the door to a place that “lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge,” as Serling narrated in the show’s first-season opening.

Serling thought it was horrendous that pop storytelling didn’t generally address the actual unfairness of the world. “The Twilight Zone” let him and other writers do that, still not without struggles, through the science-fiction lens.

One might hope the show’s tale set in Hoboken, debuting in 1960 as its 35th episode, would be among its classics. But there are reasons it doesn’t spring to mind the way the show’s episodes with haunting commentary or winking comfort do. While it flounders as it tries for the latter, “The Mighty Casey” still offers some food for thought. Maybe more than it did when it aired in 1960, thanks to the benefit of hindsight.

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By D Menzies

There’s a strong tradition of dramedies in Australian and New Zealand storytelling — of characters in a given world handling heavy emotional terrain with or amid hysterics.

There’s a philosophy in this approach, I think, that speaks to a preference people have to process things both locally and otherwise. But it’s not an easy thing to balance and still have something that takes enough seriously for that to feel meaningful.

In the first couple of episodes of the Australian dramedy police procedural series, “Deadloch,” as detective Eddie Redcliffe storms around, swearing endlessly, I thought about that here and there. There was something about this series from creators Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney, including Madeleine Sami’s portrayal of Eddie, that kept me watching. It was just hard to not feel like it was more interesting than involving at first.

And then, well, the world-at-large continues to be too much, so Eddie being a sometimes grating whirlwind is still relatively low on that scale or the scale of annoyances one can experience via Chilltown. What I found made “Deadloch” thoroughly involving is the way its many side characters interweave and inform a story about the ways privilege can twist things. Some of these are ways that are relatively more straightforward and others are rarer to see.

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By the Chilltown Blues

Upload work to a social platform lately?

For some people, the idea of that work being used — sans pay — as part of a pool for generative AI to …

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Chilltown Blues presents:

“What Would Hera Do?”

By Fennel Steuert

Heather had been between jobs too long. Her uncle wouldn’t let her stay home unless she looked for another one.

For her own good, he said.

“You’re 30-something now. You’ve got to start with something and stick with it, even if it makes you miserable. ‘Cause one day …. well, you know.”

She was glad her uncle didn’t say “one day you won’t be miserable,” and it wasn’t like she wasn’t craving for something to just ... work and work well, for her, and with her, so she went back to the mall – to its fortune teller kiosk, where, bank card in hand, she waved her card by a crystal ball.

Fortuna was the bust of a stereotype -- an old gypsy woman with hands that crept over that crystal ball. Heather watched as Fortuna’s gray eyes whirled, her system processing payment of the requisite five dollars.

“What is it you seek, my dear?”

Heather ran her other hand over the plaque where she’d crossed out text about how it works best if you use short, concise questions.

“Is there any job in this mall where I don’t have to let myself be used like …”

“Articulate more quickly, my dear,” said Fortuna.

“Right…like one of those chairs people wedge in the heavy emergency exit … you know, when they go to smoke outside but end up sitting on the chair in the doorway.”

Fortuna shrugged.

“I should take your job,” Heather said. “You are clearly burned out, Fortuna.”

Heather spied a security guard looking down at her from the mall’s second level. They were on to her, she knew, from the tiny acts of Fortuna vandalism. Heather had crossed out the plaque’s words about conciseness several times, most of them back when she worked in the greeting card store and there was a longer line for the new AI attraction.

“Bend because you are not dense enough for the wind to go around you,” Fortuna said suddenly.

Heather resisted a double-take. She found the nearest exit then walked casually to the other side of the mall. She looked up at one of the security drones as it whizzed by, stopped over the four-floor parking garage, and hovered there. A few people were coming in and out of the garage, looking each other over (“Which one of you fuckers is it keeping tabs on?” Heather figured they were saying).

She found another entrance and headed for the mall’s food court.

Heather walked around aimlessly, at first.

Some guy sitting with his girlfriend gave her the once-over, even made eye contact. It had been a while since anyone looked at Heather that way, so it felt sort of good along with the sort of bad.

Maybe you didn’t need five-thousand followers on social media just to be seen, Heather thought heavily. Like what’s-her-face had …

As Heather began looking for “help wanted” signs, in the corner of her eye, someone waved energetically at her.

It was a guy who ran the support group she was in – Alfredo. He was at a table with a woman Heather thought looked vaguely familiar.

Heather went over to them as Alfredo gestured at her.

“Sam,” he said to his companion, “this is Heather. I know her from work.”

“Yes,” Heather said. “I’m also a counselor.”

Alfredo gave Samantha a weird look, and Samantha’s face lifted toward Heather with a “sure you are” nod.

Heather grimaced. There’s got to be some kind of oath where counselors don’t call out the people they’re supposed to be counseling, she thought.

“All right, well … I’m looking for a job. Counseling doesn’t pay super well, as you know. Mr. Fredo.”

Heather turned to leave; even her back felt flushed.

“Hey,” said Samantha. “My family has an eatery here. We can use someone right now.”

The mall’s fast food options rarely had “help wanted” signs, and Heather didn’t feel like asking each one of them if they did, so this, she thought, was as promising as anything.

“If it’ll help you out,” said Heather, “sure, I’ll take a look.”

Heather stood outside Pantheon, thinking it was ridiculous that Samantha had called it an eatery.

Each of the food staff wore a T-shirt with the name of a Greek god or entity on it. The walls were beige, but the tables were white, like they were part of something made from the pillars of a coliseum.

Since when are ‘eateries’ so tacky? Heather thought.

But then Heather remembered when she worked at the greeting card store and people complained about “mall greeting cards,” like there was some classier emporium of them somewhere, and she hated herself for being so snobby.

So Heather took the job to make up for her snobbery … like those labors Hercules had to do after his stepmother tricked him into slaughtering the people he cared about most.

Fortuna will probably love me for this. Being employed again means more money and more fortunes about stuff people with money can do, like buy shit and then really spruce up a garden with it.

In her first week, Heather trained under “Lares” as he instructed her how to wash the produce for the Pantheon’s signature Mediterranean salad -- with the customer’s choice of protein source. All the while, Heather lobbied for a “Herculina” T-shirt.

Lares must have told Samantha, because she showed up one busy lunch period and told Heather that the correct female form of “Hercules” was basically “Herca” or “Hera,” to be super accurate, and they already had a Hercules.

“Huh,” said Heather. She rarely saw the guy with that T-shirt in person, but he popped up on the store’s Nowform social media feed all the time.

Lares had left Heather alone, once again, and she was doing her best to take orders in between running to the kitchen, where Jupiter and Pluto had also jumped over from a different era’s mythology to fill orders for the lunch hour crowd.

“I’ll take the Hera T-shirt then,” Heather told Samantha. “Also, do you have a T-shirt?”

What she meant by that was, I don’t suppose you could be a god/dess and help me out?

“I used to be Diana,” said Samantha. She looked at the woman whose order Heather had begun taking, smiled, and left.

Heather got her Hera T-shirt on the Saturday that was the last day of her workweek. Then she quit without telling anyone. She also blocked Pantheon’s number on her phone. When Alfredo asked her how things were going at the group meeting that week, she told him things were going great. She’d been in and out of groups since she was committed the one time.

She still went out, looked up better made-up gods on her phone, as she sat on benches along various bus stops.

She went to the mall again the next week and sat on a bench alone in her “Hera” T-shirt, and thought about where else she could apply for work.

The next day, she lit up a little when she got a call on her phone. She hadn’t since she and Paul broke up, but it was just Samantha. She pressed red and went to the mall again, this time without being Hera.

Heather dutifully waited in a line of three people at Fortuna’s, then when it was her turn, she waved her bank card and whispered very close to the little audio holes in Fortuna’s forehead:

“I need to get my act together, Fortuna. That’s why Paul dumped me. Well, that and he found someone like me but with, like, more nice things. Less baggage. How do I get or become someone who has nice things? I actually do want to help my uncle out.”

“Try Rising Anchor, the work networking service that can also help you find a partner!”

Heather nodded. “Yeah … OK, I just paid for an ad. But I’m lonely too, so I will do that, Fortuna.”

On Heather’s way home, the mall’s security drone followed her.

It followed her past a house party so loud she heard it from six-hundred feet away – where smoke rose into the sky from a man burning tires as part of his party’s barbecues, as he did a few days every week that wasn’t winter.

It followed her past the fence with the plants so overgrown that she could never tell if the animal that lunged at the wood stakes was actually a wolf, or if it just sounded that way.

She was almost flattered by the drone’s attention. Her phone buzzed with a text and, possibly boosted by the slight unease, her hopes soared that Paul suddenly gave a shit about her again.

But the text was from the Pantheon: “Please return the property you’ve stolen from the Pantheon. The security office will be notified when you’re in proximity of the mall – until you return the property you’ve stolen.”

Whatever, she thought.

The drone followed her all the way home and stayed there past nightfall.

Her uncle went to the window. “I heard about this. They’re supposed to be keeping tabs on quality of life issues.”

She smiled. “Yeah, it’s great they’re finally doing something. Only took most of history.”

“Uh huh.”

When her uncle glanced back out the window again, he sighed. “Spoke too soon. It’s gone now.”

“Oh,” Heather said, trying not to smile. “That’s too bad.”

She went to retire for the night, putting on her Hera T-shirt thinking that Samantha had some damn nerve to mess with the real ruler of their stupid Pantheon.

She would even tell Alfredo that to his face the next day at her group session, if he mentioned anything about Heather not having earned that shirt.

When Heather went to group the next day, the drone came back and followed her so quietly she didn’t even notice until she saw its shadow overlap with hers.

She walked slowly into the building, hoping some birds would pick a fight with it for getting in their way. But no …

Some Hera I am.

Alfredo was even more smiley and weird than usual, but it all seemed dialed up for everybody else. Not Heather.

She stuck around until they were the only ones in the room. Nobody else in the support group really lingered anymore after Alfredo said they were done, like he had anything else to offer that wasn’t mandated – not until someone whose mental health had newly been compromised by life, to the point of an episode, joined the group.

Heather went to the window and tapped the sill. She ducked behind a wall as the drone almost came face to face with her.

Alfredo was looking at her wide-eyed.

Heather smiled awkwardly. “Can we talk for a moment?”

“Sure,” he said. “I have to say it; I’m incredibly disappointed that you let Sam down. She gave you a real chance at something, Heather. There are consequences to actions, as you can see. Why don’t you just return that shirt?

“Why would I want to stop being Hera? I earned being a hate-filled bitch goddess. I had to put up with a week of being behind a counter here …. not in some quaint suburb or wherever Samantha’s family lives. Have you seen their Nowform account?”

“You should still be going to the therapist,” Alfredo said, somewhat sympathetically.

The program only has the one to go around, Heather thought. You should know that.

“The others … they need her more than me,” Heather said. “Please get your girlfriend to let me be drone-free. I need to look for another job.” She turned to the window. “I can’t have this thing following me. How is this shit even legal this far beyond the mall?”

Alfredo began putting his things in his bag. “Sam’s family is a pillar of that mall.”

Heather sighed. “Wait, I remember the ‘shoplifting is out of control’ stuff on the news. And some other stuff about it I had tuned out.”

“You didn’t even give Sam two-weeks’ notice,” said Alfredo. “Just return the T-shirt, Heather.”

“No. They could dock it out of my final paycheck. In fact, I assumed they would! ‘Diana’ is just being a ...”

“Reasonable, mature adult? You can – and should – rise to that by now.”

What would my T-shirt do? Heather thought. Because the real Hera, even if she lost all of her powers, wouldn’t be able to deal with any of this. She certainly wouldn’t give the T-shirt back, though.

Heather nodded to herself, walking slowly away from the counseling center in its building among a busy commercial stretch.

As people who looked up glanced around to figure out who the drone was following, she left her uncle a message.

“I may not be coming home tonight, but I’m with a friend. I’m still looking for a job.”

Heather looked up towns that were 35 miles away – past the quieter, local one where she’d been called a racial epithet once.

She looked up. “What’s your range, oh Diana, goddess of, um, hunting?”

Heather walked to the edge of town, remembering how much Paul, her ex, hated passing through there. He thought of it as a border between high standards and low ones. Heather did too, but in a different way …

She kicked a crushed soda can.

The drone continued to hover over her as she walked and walked.

Heather stopped, looked up and put her hands around her mouth. “Know why Paul hated this spot? Because it marks the border between his trashless quiet town and our trash-filled city.”

Heather heard a bus rear up on the road. She searched in vain for a bus stop nearby to catch it, but there wasn’t any. She covered her mouth as the bus passed and dust flew everywhere.

She was sure someone got a kick out of that inside the bus, which made her kinda glad not to be on it.

Heather figured she was down, roughly, to about 20 bucks to her name and about two hundred bucks she could put on her credit. It hadn’t been long enough for her Pantheon paycheck to deposit into her account.

Paul’s address still came up on her rideshare app. She ordered a ride to his house.

It had been three months since she saw it last; it was almost a second home, then.

Heather never thought of all the places she might have to go where she wasn’t wanted, she’d be going back to this one. But she couldn’t think of a single other address in the next town over.

In her ride’s rear-view mirror, Heather saw the drone circle back the way it came in the purple-tinged sky.

But will it be back for me this far out tomorrow? Heather wondered.

Heather closed the rideshare car’s door as she got out.

It was the only sound, and as the car quietly drove away from Paul’s house, Heather thought Paul might look out and see what this local version of a commotion was about.

Her ex’s bedroom on the top floor of the family’s two-story home was lit warmly against the night sky.

He was probably still dating that yoga instructor, Heather figured.

Heather walked fifteen minutes to the main street. She wasn’t sure entirely, but she’d given the Pantheon her number and she knew the phone itself had like 50 trackers on it. No more just hoping it would go away. She hovered around the trash can in front of a brightly lit sandwich shop, trying to look up how these new security drones worked, but between her phone plan and like one lightning bolt’s worth of wifi reception (goddamn you, Zeus), she couldn’t look up anything.

The thought of giving back the shirt was more tempting, until she realized it was rare anyone called her anymore. So if this was how they were tracking her … Heather let the phone fade to its passcode screen, then she dropped it in the can. Shaking her head, she kept walking until she came upon another brightly lit storefront: Cellular Heaven.

There was a woman behind the counter.

“Hi,” said Heather. “What’s your cheapest, most reliable phone?” she asked. “And also ... are you guys hiring?”

“You’re in luck on the phone,” the woman said. “And yes, we’ve got a vacancy.”

“Turnover high here?” Heather glanced out at the window: still no drone. “It’s high back where I used to work, I mean.”

The woman shrugged. “It’s a quiet gig where you’ve got to hustle for commissions. Getting someone reliable always means a turnover eventually, when they get luckier.”

“Huh,” said Heather. “Well, I’d like to fill out an application. “I still want a new phone, even if I don’t get a job.”

“You’re probably better off applying online,” the woman said.

“I’m a good fortune teller,” Heather said. “The only plan I can afford will definitely make a reliable connection very hard.”

“Ah …” The woman gave Heather a form. “We prefer applications with at least one reference,” she said.

Heather nodded. Her former manager from the greeting card store would do.

When Heather finished the form, she handed it back and tapped the counter a few times. “The bus runs through here, right?”

“It does,” the manager said.

Heather nodded to herself. “So about that phone …”

Cradling her new phone because she didn’t have a pillow, Heather spent the night on Paul’s lawn. It was surreal to her how no one else ever seemed around where he lived — but one of those reliable kinds of surreal, at least.

The drone was not a night owl, but maybe it’d waiting for her at home, Heather figured. She didn’t want to think about that. She just wanted someone to call her and talk to her, or better yet, do that whole in-person thing, but one day at a time, she supposed.

Heather dozed off and woke up with Paul and the woman with five-thousand followers staring at her.

Paul sighed. “Heather, what are you doing here?”

“Hi,” said Heather. “It’s a long story. I became this goddess and you get, well, followers, and one followed me till I got here. Something about this place, though ...”

Paul and his new girlfriend were looking at her like she was pathetic, and Heather almost laughed despite how there was part of her that just wished he’d hug her. But he didn’t see all of her anymore ... he definitely thought she was pretty once, but she’d also been rough around the edges. And she still was, but Heather knew that wasn’t all she was, so Paul, who was really kind of a weenie, anyway, could go kick rocks.

She looked at Paul’s girlfriend, taking note of the resemblance again and remembering how Paul had a sunroof over the driver and passenger seat.

What was one more possible follower for someone with so many? thought Heather.

She pointed toward the route that would get trashier the closer she got to home. She took a deep breath.

“Since we’re all here, can I get a ride? I was only here for work.”

Fennel Steuert is the author of “Magic Flask.”

By the Chilltown Blues

What is there to be said about a city that, according to a report from its mayor, is about 250 million dollars in the red?

The same that can be said about its most challenging section, a place that’s been in the red (and redlined) well before this winter of discontent.

Mayor James Solomon’s report emphasizes the need for truths to be shared, even if they’re hard; doing so would seem to stand as a contrast to what we consider the previous administration’s “let’s keep it positive” copy flow while, according to Solomon’s Feb. 4 report, what was really happening was “depleting reserves, selling public land, and using every trick in the book …” to “avoid making honest decisions …”

That’s still in the air generally, we believe, but what’s also worth noting about this is the simple acknowledgement that no one digs out of a hole by pretending it’s not a hole.

The deepest holes exist at the crossroads of various lines of poverty, and all of that is reinforced by time.

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— Chilltown Blues

This humble post and comic, sans paywall, is made possible by our paid subscribers. Thank you. Please consider becoming a paid or free subscriber; visit our support page, or, if you like, buy a shirt or something else we’ve designed at chilltown-blues-shop.fourthwall.com.

Also note: As featured in our previous story, singer-songwriter Stef C is putting on a show to fund-raise for two worthwhile organizations. It’s happening in JC the evening of Saturday, Feb. 21, and for more details and to RSVP (ideally by today, Feb. 20) for limited seats and more info visit partiful.com/e/BlxxACequJ9v2710HLJ5.

By Chilltown Blues

Last year, Stefanie Carapezza released her debut EP, “Stagefright,” and upon hearing it this year (available on all major streaming platforms), it was too good to not feel like it came out yesterday, so here we are.

Carapezza’s EP opens with “Scorched Earth,” a song that immediately shows the jazz singer’s inflection the singer-songwriter can vocalize in. Carapezza’s voice then rolls on throughout the EP in ways a bit more varied — with rock-, pop- and other tinges bolstered by strong songwriting.

It’s another great example of indie music in the singer-songwriter vein that’s stronger than what carries that label and gets the most streams.

Carapezza, a JC resident, answered some questions about “Stagefright” as she prepared to put together a concert for these challenging times.

“It’s really challenging times,” Carapezza agreed, “and I think more than ever art has become so important and maybe more polarizing because of these events. I want to highlight the Jersey City art community in general is very vocal and active to recent events regarding ICE presence in JC and Hoboken. I am putting together a show with some of my artist friends to help fund-raise for different organizations doing the work of promoting equity and inclusion for immigrants.”

It may be a five-track EP, but “Stagefright” has big arcs that it deftly explores — with “Scorched Earth” being about what it took the song’s narrator to realize her worth. A witch burned at the stake acts as a metaphor for self-actualization after destruction — for becoming a bat out of hell, despite having chronic stage fright.

“The EP collectively showcases my insecurities as an artist and musician because I did start my music journey later in life,” Carapezza said.

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